It was made, if we rightly recollect, some time since, a matter of
grave accusation against Mr. Moore, that yielding to the
entreaties of interested parties, he consented to suppress, or rather to destroy, portions of a
manuscript piece of auto-biography, which had been

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Lord Byron.

confided to him for
publication by Lord Byron. We are now informed that the
omitted fragments consisted chiefly of satirical portraits of living persons, and it must,
therefore, be at once admitted that in consigning them to the flames, Mr.
Moore exercised a sound as well as an honourable discretion. If we may be
allowed to judge from the journals before us, we should strongly suspect that the manuscript
contained also some unreserved confessions of the errors of the noble author, during the early
part of his short and passionate career. If so, it cannot be doubted that, in pronouncing a
similar sentence of condemnation upon such passages, Mr Moore has evinced
that good sense and right feeling, which we have often had occasion to admire in his own
celebrated productions.

With every respect for that gentleman, it becomes our duty, however, to observe
that it is, to say the least of it, doubtful, whether he has not, even yet, used the pruning
knife rather too sparingly with regard to the original materials which were subjected to his
revision. Let any person who reads this volume, ask himself, on perusing the last of its pages,
whether it is a work which, so far as it goes, tends to exalt the character of Lord Byron. For ourselves, we must avow that we have risen from it
with impressions unfavourable to the memory of that ill-fated nobleman, such as we had never
entertained before. We had, of course, with the million, read and heard of statements and
rumours affecting his moral reputation. But looking to the quarters whence they chiefly came,
we were but little disposed to form a fixed opinion on the subject; and that opinion, feeble
and wavering as it was, had almost faded away through the mere influence of time. The living
fame of the bard was, by its steady brilliancy, gaining every day upon the transgressions of
the man, and drawing more closely round them the curtains of oblivion. Thus the eccentricities
and vices of Burns are already nearly forgotten by his
contemporaries, and are very little known amongst the generations who are beginning to be
acquainted with his poetry.

It is, perhaps, to be regretted that passages have been allowed to remain in this
volume, which, sanctioned as they are by the authority of Mr.
Moore, appear calculated only to immortalize a great portion of the scandal
which has hitherto floated only upon the tongues of the malevolent. At the same time, we are
ready to admit that the retention of matter of this description affords a signal proof of the
independent and historical spirit which the Biographer has brought to the execution of his
task.

In a literary point of view, the volume before us is perhaps the best specimen of
memoir writing, which has been ever produced in our language. It has all the advantages of
great variety, not only as to subject, but as to style. In the latter respect we may observe a
striking difference between the composition of Lord
Byron’s letters and that of his journals. In the former, he does not
hesitate

Lord Byron.

219

to take any expression that happens to occur to a highly excited
fancy. He often uses phrases which are usually found only in the dictionary of the pugilists,
or borrowed from the coteries of Harrow or Cambridge, of scarcely superior elegance. Sometimes
he tries his hand at invention, and strikes out an expression not ill-suited to his purpose. In
the journals his diction is more careless. In neither the letters nor the journals, do we
observe any promise of that excellence, attributed by Mr.
Moore to the epistles which are to compose the second volume.

The narrative portion of the present work, which belongs to the Biographer, might
easily be comprised in a small duodecimo. It is framed in a style almost the reverse of that
which disfigured the “Life of
Sheridan.” It is distinguished by a total freedom from affectation and
metaphor, and flows onward in its even course arrayed only in a charming simplicity. Several of
the letters have been already published. But many are also now presented to the reader for the
first time. In the journals also, as well as in Mr.
Moore’s narrative, there is a sufficiency of novelty to prevent the mind
from being wearied with the perusal, although the whole volume occupies nearly seven hundred
pages.

Those who are acquainted with Lord Byron only
through the medium of his poetry, will hardly believe, though there can be no doubt of the
fact,—that he was prouder of his ancestry than of his fame as an author. His pride was not
unfounded, as there are few families in England which can shew a line of more ancient and more
honourable descent than that to which he belonged. His immediate progenitors, however, appear
to have been not very prudent in their financial affairs. His father, Captain Byron, was a mere spendthrift, as well as a most
dissolute personage. He prevailed on Lady Carmarthen to
elope with him to the continent, and married her after her former husband had obtained a
divorce. The Honourable Augusta Byron, now the wife of
Colonel Leigh, was the only issue of that union. Her
mother having died in 1784, Captain Byron, in the following year, married
an heiress,—Miss Catherine Gordon, of Gight, in
Scotland, and in a very short time he contrived to dissipate almost the whole of her fortune. A
sojourn upon the continent was the consequence. Soon after their return to England, viz. 22d
January, 1788, her only son was born, in Holles-street, London. In reference to the accident of
his having been an only child, Lord Byron, in one of his journals,
mentions the following curious coincidences: “I have been thinking,” he
says, “of an odd circumstance. My daughter, my wife, my half-sister, my mother, my
sister’s mother, my natural daughter, and myself, are, or were, all only children. My
sister’s mother (Lady Conyers) had only my half-sister by that
(her second) marriage (herself, too, an only child), and my father had only me, an only
child, by his second marriage with my mother, an only child too, Such a complication of
only

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Lord Byron.

children, all tending to one family, is singular enough, and
looks like fatality almost.”

The conduct of Captain Byron rendered a
separation inevitable; young Byron, however, remained with
his mother, and lived for several years at Aberdeen, under her care. It sufficiently appears
that her example was not much calculated to improve his natural disposition, which, even at a
very early age, was quite unmanageable. When reprimanded by his nurse, he sometimes rent his
frock from top to bottom, in one of what he afterwards called his “silent
rages.” In this he only imitated his mother, who is represented to have frequently
performed a similar operation upon her caps and gowns. Indeed the account given of this lady in
every part of this work, and apparently upon the best authority, reminds us of the furies of
ancient times. Under the tutelage of such a woman, we can scarcely wonder at the untameable
sort of disposition which formed the principal element of evil in the character of
Lord Byron. She did not even hesitate, in moments of irritation, to
reproach him with the deformity of one of his feet, which was twisted out of its natural
position at the time of his birth—an accident attributed by Lord Byron to
a false sense of delicacy on the part of his mother.

Notwithstanding this rebelliousness of temper, there was from his earliest age a
trait in young Byron’s character which ran through it
to the last, and which rendered him sometimes a very tractable, if not even an amiable person,
in the hands of any body who knew how to win his good opinion, and had gained an influence over
him. Such in his childhood was his nurse, Mary Gray; and
we shall have occasion to remark, in the course of his life, that he was particularly attached
to the system of “favouritism.” It is a singular fact, that through the attentions
of his nurse, who was a woman of great piety, he attained a far earlier and more intimate
acquaintance with the sacred writings, than falls to the lot of most young people. It is
perhaps more singular still, that at the most depraved period of his after-years, when, if not
a theoretical, he was decidedly a practical atheist, and scorned the notion of any kind of
religion, and of futurity,—he still retained all his early fondness for the Old Testament.

At the age of five years, young Byron was sent
to a day school at Aberdeen, where the enormous sum of five shillings per quarter was paid for
his education. He was subsequently transferred to an establishment of a higher order, where his
chief ambition was to distinguish himself as a good boxer. He next fretted at home under the
care of a Scotch tutor, the learned son of a shoemaker, from whose superintendence he was
recalled to England, in his tenth year, by the demise of his uncle, to whose title and
possessions, such as these were, he then became entitled to succeed.

Lord Byron.

221

During young Byron’s residence in
Scotland, an attack of scarlet fever rendered it necessary for his mother to take him, for
change of air, to the Highlands, to whose romantic scenery, he often reverts in his writings.
It has been sometimes thought that this visit to the mountains and lakes of the north sowed the
germ of poesy in his youthful mind. Mr. Moore combats
this opinion, in a little digression, which is prettily written; and in which his own
experience enables him to shew, that such impressions of natural scenery as young
Byron then received, might perhaps be justly considered as among the
purest aliments of his genius, when it was subsequently awakened,—but not the sources of its
inspiration. Such impressions received in childhood must be classed, he thinks, ‘with
the various other remembrances which that period leaves behind—of its innocence, its
sports, its first hopes, and affections—all of them reminiscences which the poet afterwards
converts to his use, but which no more make the poet, than—to apply an illustration of
Byron’s own—the honey can be said to make the bee that
treasures it.’

It was, we suppose, in one of his mountain rambles, that our hero, at the early
age of eight years, fell “in love” with Mary
Duff. This incident is dwelt upon with serious recollection in one of his
journals, and in terms which leave little doubt that his affections were really engaged at that
period. Mr. Moore reminds us, that Dante was but nine years old, when he saw and loved Beatrice; and that Canova
well remembered having been in love, when but five years old. Alfieri, who is also said to have been a precocious lover, looked upon such
premature susceptibility to be an infallible sign of a soul framed for the fine arts. An
instance of a similar description has fallen within our own observation; in which all the pure
effects of that passion were more apparent than in any affair of the heart which it has ever
fallen to our lot to witness. The greater number of our readers will perhaps be inclined to
laugh both at the instances mentioned by Mr. Moore, and at our testimony
in favour of their probability; so we shall quit the land of romance, and attend young
Byron on his first journey to Newstead, of which he and
his mother went to take possession upon the death of his uncle.

The character of the old gentleman had already surrounded that ancient monastery
with imaginary horrors. He had killed his neighbour, Mr.
Chaworth, in an affray, and frightened his wife away from him. In his latter
years he lived in complete seclusion from the world,—his only companions being a colony of
crickets which he had reared, an old man servant, and his cook, who, perhaps, for sufficient
reasons, was dignified in the neighbourhood with the title of Lady Betty.
He had endeavoured to strip his heir of the family estate of Rochdale, in Lancashire, by a
sale, which, however, was subsequently invalidated; and the grounds and mansion at Newstead,
were found by their new possessor in a

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Lord Byron.

state of the most lamentable
decay. This possession took place in the summer of 1798. Mr.
Moore preserves an anecdote connected with it which we must not pass over.

‘They had already arrived at the Newstead toll-bar, and
saw the woods of the Abbey stretching out to receive them, when Mrs. Byron, affecting to be ignorant of the place, asked the woman of the
toll-house—to whom that seat belonged? She was told that the owner of it, Lord Byron, had been some months dead. “And who is
the next heir?” asked the proud and happy mother. “They
say,” answered the woman, “it is a little boy who lives at
Aberdeen.”—“And this is he, bless him!” exclaimed the
nurse, no longer able to contain herself, and turning to kiss with delight the young lord
who was seated on her lap.’—p. 25.

In the following remarks, we may trace some of the circumstances which shed a
baneful influence upon the life of Lord Byron.

‘Even under the most favourable circumstances, such an
early elevation to rank would be but too likely to have a dangerous influence on the
character; and the guidance under which young Byron
entered upon his new station was, of all others, the least likely to lead him safely
through its perils and temptations. His mother, without judgment or self-command,
alternately spoiled him by indulgence, and irritated, or—what was still worse,—amused him
by her violence. That strong sense of the ridiculous, for which he was afterwards so
remarkable, and which showed itself thus early, got the better even of his fear of her; and
when Mrs. Byron, who was a short and corpulent
person, and rolled considerably in her gait, would, in a rage, endeavour to catch him, for
the purpose of inflicting punishment, the young urchin, proud of being able to outstrip
her, notwithstanding his lameness, would run round the room, laughing like a little
Puck, and mocking at all her menaces. In the few
anecdotes of his early life which he related in his “Memoranda,” though the
name of his mother was never mentioned but with respect, it was not difficult to perceive
that the recollections she had left behind—at least, those that had made the deepest
impression—were of a painful nature. One of the most striking passages, indeed, in the few
pages of that Memoir which related to his early days, was where, in speaking of his own
sensitiveness on the subject of his deformed foot, he described the feeling of horror and
humiliation that came over him, when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him,
“a lame brat.” As all that he had felt strongly through life was, in
some shape or other, reproduced in his poetry, it was not likely that an expression such as
this should fail of being recorded. Accordingly we find, in the opening of his drama,
“The Deformed
Transformed,”

‘“Bertha. Out, hunchback!

Arnold. I was born
so, mother!”’

It may be questioned, indeed, whether that whole drama was not indebted for its origin
to this single recollection.

‘While such was the character of the person under whose
immediate eye his youth was passed, the counteraction which a kind and watchful guardian
might have opposed to such example and influence was almost wholly

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223

lost to him. Connected but remotely with the family, and never having had any opportunity
of knowing the boy, it was with much reluctance that Lord
Carlisle originally undertook the trust; nor can we wonder that when his
duties as a guardian brought him acquainted with Mrs.
Byron, he should be deterred from interfering more than was absolutely
necessary for the child, by his fear of coming into collision with the violence and caprice
of the mother.

‘Had even the character which the last Lord left behind
been sufficiently popular to pique his young successor into an emulation of his good name,
such a salutary rivalry of the dead would have supplied the place of living examples; and
there is no mind in which such an ambition would have been more likely to spring up than
that of Byron. But unluckily, as we have seen, this was
not the case; and not only was so fair a stimulus to good conduct wanting, but a rivalry of
a very different nature substituted in its place. The strange anecdotes told of the last
lord by the country people, among whom his fierce and solitary habits had procured for him
a sort of fearful renown, were of a nature livelily to arrest the fancy of the young poet,
and even to waken in his mind a sort of boyish admiration for singularities which he found
thus elevated into matters of wonder and record. By some it has been even supposed that in
these stories of his eccentric relative his imagination found the first dark outlines of
that ideal character, which he afterwards embodied in so many different shapes, and
ennobled by his genius. But however this may be, it is at least far from improbable that,
destitute as he was of other and better models, the peculiarities of his immediate
predecessor should, in a considerable degree, have influenced his fancy and tastes. One
habit, which he seems early to have derived from this spirit of imitation, and which he
retained through life, was that of constantly having arms of some description about or near
him—it being his practice, when quite a boy, to carry, at all times, small loaded pistols
in his waistcoat pockets. The affray, indeed, of the late lord with Mr. Chaworth had, at a very early age, by connecting
duelling in his mind with the name of his race, led him to turn his attention to this mode
of arbitrament; and the mortification which he had, for some time, to endure at school,
from insults, as he imagined, hazarded on the presumption of his physical inferiority,
found consolation in the thought that a day would yet arrive when the law of the pistol
would place him on a level with the strongest.’—pp. 25—27.

By the advice of Lord Carlisle, and with the
view of procuring the assistance of Dr. Baillie, towards
the cure of his deformity, Lord Byron was sent to the late
Dr. Glennie’s school at Dulwich, in the summer
of 1799. At the same time his mother fixed her residence at Sloane Terrace, and so frequently
interrupted his attention to school business by sending for him, and led the worthy Doctor such
a life when he refused to let him go home, that he was too happy, at the end of nearly two
years, to get rid of both the mother and son. The latter was next placed at Harrow, of which
the Rev. Dr. Drury was at that time, 1801, the head
master. Of his habits while at that school we have from his own pen abundant memoranda, from
which we shall select a few of the most characteristic.

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Lord Byron.

‘“Till I was eighteen years old (odd as it may seem)
I had never read a Review. But while at Harrow, my general information was so great on
modern topics as to induce a suspicion that I could only collect so much information from
Reviews, because I was never seen reading, but always idle, and
in mischief, or at play. The truth is, that I read eating, read in bed, read when no one
else read, and had read all sorts of reading since I was five years old, and yet never met
with a Review, which is the only reason I know of why I should not have read them. But it
is true, for I remember when Hunter and Curzon, in 1804, told me this opinion at Harrow, I made
them laugh by my ludicrous astonishment in asking them ‘What
is a Review?’ To be sure, they were then less common. In three years
more, I was better acquainted with that same; but the first I ever read was in 1806-7.

‘“At school I was (as I have said) remarked for the
extent and readiness of my general information; but in all other
respects idle, capable of great sudden exertions (such as thirty or forty Greek hexameters,
of course with such prosody as it pleased God), but of few continuous drudgeries. My
qualities were much more oratorical and martial than poetical, and Dr. Drury, my grand patron (our head master), had a great
notion that I should turn out an orator, from my fluency, my turbulence, my voice, my
copiousness of declamation, and my action. I remember that my first declamation astonished
him into some unwonted (for he was economical of such) and sudden compliments, before the
declaimers at our first rehearsal. My first Harrow verses (that is, English, as exercises),
a translation of a chorus from the Prometheus of Æschylus, were received by
him but coolly. No one had the least notion that I should subside into poesy.

‘“Peel, the
orator and statesman (‘that was, or is, or is to be’), was my form-fellow, and
we were both at the top of our remove (a public-school phrase). We were on good terms, but
his brother was my intimate friend. There were always great hopes of Peel, amongst us all,
masters and scholars—and he has not disappointed them. As a scholar he was greatly my
superior; as a declaimer and actor, I was reckoned at least his equal; as a schoolboy, out of school, I was always in scrapes, and
he never; and in school, he always knew his lesson, and I rarely,—but when I knew it, I knew it
nearly as well. In general information, history, &c. &c. I think I was his superior, as well as of most boys of my
standing.’”—pp. 40—41.

One of the most redeeming traits in the character of Lord Byron, was that strong susceptibility for friendship, to which we have
already alluded.

‘“My school-friendships were with me passions* (for
I was always violent), but I do not know that there is one which has endured (to be sure
some have been cut short by death) till now. That with Lord
Clare begun one of the earliest and lasted longest—being only interrupted by
distance—that I know of. I never hear the word ‘Clare’ without a beating of the heart even now, and I write it with the feelings of 1803-4-5 ad
infinitum.”’—p. 42.

* On a leaf of one of his note books, dated 1808, I find the following
passage from Marmontel, which no doubt struck him as
applicable to the enthusiasm of his own youthful friendships:—“L’amitie, qui
dans le

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225

Mr. Moore states, that ‘the following
description of what Lord Byron felt after leaving
Harrow, when he encountered in the world any of his old school fellows, falls far short of
the scene which actually occurred but a few years before his death in Italy; when on
meeting with his friend, Lord Clare, after a long
separation, he was affected almost to tears, by the recollections which rushed upon
him.’

“——If chance some well remember’d face,

Some old companion of my early race,

Advance to claim his friend with honest joy,

My eyes, my heart proclaim’d me still a boy;

The glittering scene, the fluttering groups around,

Were all forgotten when my friend was found.”—p. 45.

There is a trait of magnanimity about the subjoined anecdote, which it is
impossible not to admire.

‘While Lord Byron and Mr. Peel were at Harrow together, a tyrant some few years
older, whose name was ******, claimed a right to fag little Peel,
which claim (whether rightly or wrongly, I know not) Peel resisted.
His resistance, however, was in vain:—****** not only subdued him, but determined also to
punish the refractory slave; and proceeded forthwith to put this determination in practice,
by inflicting a kind of bastinado on the inner fleshy side of the boy’s arm, which,
during the operation, was twisted round with some degree of technical skill, to render the
pain more acute. While the stripes were succeeding each other, and poor
Peel writhing under them, Byron
saw and felt for the misery of his friend; and, although he knew that he was not strong
enough to fight ****** with any hope of success, and that it was dangerous even to approach
him, he advanced to the scene of action, and with a blush of rage, tears in his eyes, and a
voice trembling between terror and indignation, asked very humbly if ****** would be
pleased to tell him, “how many stripes he meant to
inflict?”—“Why,” returned the executioner, “you
little rascal, what is that to you?”—“Because, if you
please,” said Byron, holding out his arm, “I would
take half?”’—pp. 45, 46.

His remarkable attachment to aristocratic notions, had already obtained for him
at Dulwich, the appropriate nickname of the “Old English Baron.” His
friendships were indeed chiefly formed among boys, who in point of rank were his inferiors; yet
even this preference would appear to have arisen from the pride of affording
“protection,” and was in itself essentially Patrician.

We have already mentioned Lord Byron’s
first love. Her image was in due time displaced by Margaret
Parker, his cousin, who, having died in consequence of a fall which injured her
spine, left the throne of his affections open for a new sovereign, who took possession of it
when he was about the age of fifteen. This affair was father more serious than any which
preceded it, for his biographer

tells us that ‘it sunk so deep into his mind, as to give a
colour to all his future life.’ The object of his new flame, was Miss Chaworth, who was about two years older than himself, and
the heiress of Annesley, an estate adjoining his own. A union with her he hoped would heal the
feuds which had existed between their fathers, and have paired lands “broad and
rich.” He evidently set his heart upon her, for besides her worldly endowments,
she was possessed of ‘much personal beauty, and a disposition the most amiable and
attaching.’ But alas for his hopes, her heart was already engaged, and the
mortification of his rejection as a lover was infinitely enhanced by Miss
Chaworth having said to her maid, “do you think I could care any thing
for that lame boy?” This pretty speech was either overheard by, or reported to
him, and as he himself described it, “was like a shot through his heart.” No
more of his Harrow vacations appear to have been spent at Annesley. The object of his
attachment was married in 1805, to Mr. John Musters.

It appears that the character of young Byron,
at Harrow, was that of a capital declaimer and an idle body. The latter imputation was not
unfounded, says his biographer, as far as regards his tasks in school. He had, however, already
devoured an incredible number of works in all departments of literature, always excepting those
which were in any way connected with his scholastic studies.

In October, 1805, he was removed to Trinity College, Cambridge, where his time
does not appear to have passed very pleasantly. His vacations were usually spent with his
mother, at Southwell, amid the cheerful society of the Pigots, the
Bechers, the Leacrofts, and the Hansons, from
whom he experienced the most affectionate attentions. With these friends, particularly with the
Pigots, his letter-writing first began; they also had the good fortune
to be acquainted with his first experiments in poetry, which appear to have been commenced
about the year 1806; at least it would seem that he then first thought of printing his verses.
He was, says his biographer, in the parlour of that cottage which, during his visits to
Southwell, had become his adopted home. Miss Pigot, who
was not before aware of his turn for versifying, had been reading aloud the poems of Burns, when young Byron said that
“he too was a poet sometimes, and would write down for her some verses of his own,
which he remembered.” He then, with a pencil, wrote those lines beginning
“In thee I fondly hoped to clasp,” which were printed in his first
unpublished volume, but are not contained in the editions that followed. The rage for printing
then took entire possession of him, although his views were limited only to the circle of his
friends. Ridge, the bookseller, at Newark, had the
honour of receiving his first manuscripts. At Southwell, also, young Byron
enacted in private theatricals with no mean eclat. His favourite characters, at least those in
which he appeared to the greatest advantage, were Pen-

Lord Byron.

227

ruddock, in the
“Wheel of Fortune,” and
Fickle, in the “Weathercock;” the gloom of the one, and the whim
of the other, ‘being types, as it were, of the two extremes, between which his own
character in after-life so singularly vibrated.’ He furnished the prologues and
epilogues on these occasions, in which he frequently betrayed his talent for satire.

Of his first volume of poetry,
printed for private circulation, only two, or, at the utmost, three copies, are now said to be
extant. It was printed in quarto, and consisted but of a few sheets, filled chiefly with
imitations of Lord Strangford’sCamoen’s, and Little’s poems. It is due to Mr. Moore to remark, that he fully agreed in the opinion of a
friend of Lord Byron, who represented to him that, at least
so far as the latter author was concerned, there were ‘much more worthy models, both
in style and thought, to be found among the established names of English
literature.’ In compliance with the wishes of his friend, the first edition was
recalled, and a second substituted for it in 1807, consisting of about one hundred copies. The
applause which they obtained, urged him at length to the publication of the “Hours of Idleness,” which launched him fairly
upon the tide of public opinion, and appears, in the first instance, to have had very
considerable success.

In the Spring of the following year, 1808, appeared the famous critique upon this production in the Edinburgh Review, with the history and consequences
of which our readers are so well informed that we need not dwell upon them. We fully agree,
however, in the justice of Mr. Moore’s remark,
‘that the early verses of Lord Byron, however
distinguished by tenderness and grace, give but little promise of those dazzling miracles
of poesy with which he afterwards astonished and enchanted the world; and that, if his
youthful verses now have a peculiar charm in our eyes, it is because we read them, as it
were, by the light of his subsequent glory.’

It is lamentable to find that at this early period of his life, Lord Byron, having scarcely attained his twentieth year, had been
already a thorough sceptic in religion, and a complete adept in the vices of the metropolis. He
had even formed a connection, the object of which became domesticated with him in lodgings at
Brompton, and accompanied him disguised in boy’s clothes. This person he introduced as
his younger brother. In the vulgar exercises of boxing and sparring he took great delight, and
thus became acquainted with the well-known Jackson,
‘for whom he continued through life to entertain the sincerest regard.’ D’Egville, the ballet master, and Grimaldi, the clown, were amongst his favourite companions. In
gambling also he was already a proficient.

It was in the autumn of this year (1808), that Lord
Byron took up his residence at Newstead, where, from his disappointed affections
and baffled hopes, melancholy gained fast upon him. A great portion of his time was dedicated
to his satire, “English Bards and

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Lord Byron.

Scotch Reviewers,” with which he appears to have taken more pains
than with any other of his compositions. In 1809 he attained is majority, and celebrated it by
dining on eggs and bacon and a bottle of ale. His pecuniary supplies were already so inadequate
to his wants, that he was obliged to borrow money at an enormously usurious interest, which
long preyed upon his finances.

In addition to the other causes of mortification which were already sufficiently
numerous to weigh heavily upon a sensitive mind, be had now to undergo a trial of more than
common bitterness to a young and proud nobleman, upon his very first step in the exercise of
his hereditary privileges. It is worth observing, that on coming to London to take his seat in
the House of Lords, he brought with him his satire prepared for publication; and containing
among other things, a neatly turned compliment to his guardian, in the following terms:—

This compliment was soon exchanged for verses of a wholly opposite description,
and perhaps the change is not to be wondered at, when we learn, that the Earl of Carlisle, from whom he had some right to expect such a
mark of kindness, refused to attend him on taking his seat, and that he was in consequence
obliged to go through that interesting ceremony alone. We can scarcely imagine a slight more
wounding to his pride than this. It would seem, that he at first intended to exert himself as a
legislator; but after trying his powers of oratory on two or three occasions, on which he
displayed principles that would now be set down as almost ultra-radical, the novelty of the
thing wore off, and he turned his mind wholly to that art in which he was destined to shine
with a brighter splendour.

Upon the effect of his satire, after it was published, we need make no remark.
Mr. Moore has collected several notes, highly
interesting in a literary point of view, connected with it, for which we must refer to his
volume. It is well known that the noble author subsequently repented of his production; he must
have felt that it went vastly beyond the provocation he had received, galling as it was; and
that his spirit was embittered not only against those who had injured him, but against all
mankind.

Shortly after the publication of this work, Lord
Byron went for the first time abroad. But before we follow him in his journey,
we must notice a series of farewell revelries which took place at Newstead, in the spring of
1809. His visitors, consisting of Charles Skinner Matthews,
Esq. and four others not named, sat down to dinner arrayed in monkish dresses,
with crosses, beads, &c., about eight o’clock in the evening. After dinner, Burgundy
was handed around in a human skull, and they seldom retired before two o’clock in the
morning. We turn from the scenes of depravity

Lord Byron.

229

which followed, and which
though passed over with as much delicacy as possible by Mr.
Moore, may, even through his apologies, be abundantly understood.

Lord Byron left England in the month of June, 1809, for
Lisbon;* his mind overloaded with the many mortifying reflections which the retrospect of his
past career suggested. From Lisbon he travelled by Seville and Cadiz to Gibraltar, and thence
to Albania and Greece, where Mr. Hobhouse’s
travels have long since informed us of their adventures. After Mr.
Hobhouse left him, he proceeded to Constantinople, and then returned to Greece,
where the first cantos of his Childe Harold
appear to have been written. After an absence of about two years he returned to England, with
feelings which are painfully described in the following extract from one of his letters.

‘“Indeed, my prospects are not very pleasant.
Embarrassed in my private affairs, indifferent to public, solitary without the wish to be
social; with a body a little enfeebled by a succession of fevers, but a spirit, I, trust,
yet unbroken, I am returning home without a hope, and almost without
a desire. The first thing I shall have to encounter will be a lawyer, the next a creditor,
then colliers, farmers, surveyors, and all the agreeable attachments to estates out of
repair and contested coal-pits. In short, I am sick and sorry, and when I have a little
repaired my irreparable affairs, away I shall march, either to campaign in Spain, or back
again to the East, where I can at least have cloudless skies and a cessation from
impertinence.”’—pp. 247, 248.

His biographer informs us of some of the miseries which awaited him on his
arrival.

* ‘Lord Byron used sometimes
to mention a strange story, which the commander of the packet, Captain Kidd, related to him on the passage. This
officer stated that, being asleep, one night, in his birth, he was awakened by the
pressure of something heavy on his limbs, and, there being a faint light in the room,
could see, as he thought, distinctly, the figure of his brother, who was, at that time,
in the naval service in the East Indies, dressed in his uniform and stretched across
the bed. Concluding it to be an illusion of the senses, he shut his eyes and made an
effort to deep. But still the same pressure continued, and still as often as he
ventured to take another look, he saw the figure lying across him in the same position.
To add to the wonder, on putting his hand forth to touch this form, he found the
uniform, in which it appeared to be dressed, dripping wet. On the entrance of one of
his brother officers, to whom he called out in alarm, the apparition vanished; but in a
few months after, he received the startling intelligence that on that night his brother
had been drowned in the Indian seas. Of the supernatural character of this appearance,
Captain Kidd himself did not appear to have the slightest
doubt.’—[A similar circumstance was mentioned to us some years ago of a lady,
whose son went out as a Cadet to India, and who on the passage fell from the rigging into
the sea, and perished. She awoke one night under an irresistible impression, that she saw
him fall into the sea; and from the letters which afterwards reached her, it appeared that
her dream occurred at the moment it was realized.—Ed. M.R.]

230

Lord Byron.

‘“To be happy at home,” says Johnson, “is the ultimate result of all ambition,
the end to which every enterprise and labour tends.” But Lord Byron had no home,—at least none that deserved this
endearing name. A fond, family circle to accompany him with its prayers, while away, and
draw round him with listening eagerness, on his return, was what, unluckily, he never knew,
though with a heart, as we have seen, by nature formed for it. In the absence, too, of all
that might cheer and sustain, he had every thing to encounter that could distress and
humiliate. To the dreariness of a home without affection was added the burden of an
establishment without means, and he had thus all the embarrassments of domestic life
without its charms. His affairs had, during his absence, been suffered to fall into
confusion, even greater than their inherent tendency to such a state warranted. There had
been, the preceding year, an execution on Newstead, for a debt of 1500l. owing to the Messrs. Brothers, upholsterers; and a
circumstance, told of the veteran, Joe Murray, on
this occasion, well deserves to be mentioned. To this faithful old servant, jealous of the
ancient honour of the Byrons, the sight of the notice of sale, pasted
up on the abbey-door, could not be otherwise than an unsightly and intolerable nuisance,
Having enough, however, of the fear of the law before his eyes, not to tear the writing
down, he was at last forced, as his only consolatory expedient, to paste a large piece of
brown paper over it.’—pp. 257, 258.

On arriving in England, Lord Byron talked
much to his friend, Mr. Dallas, of an imitation of Horace’s
“Art of Poetry,” which he had
executed while abroad, and upon which he set a high value. With difficulty, and almost by
accident, was it drawn from him that he had also written a number of verses in Spenser’s measure, “relative to the countries
he had visited.” It is needless to add, that these verses formed the first cantos
of Childe Harold. In his own opinion the
imitation of Horace, which, if we may judge from the specimens given of it
by Mr. Moore, was but a very poor performance, greatly
excelled the Spenserian stanzas; thus adding one more to the strange instances on record, in
which eminent authors have formed ludicrously false judgments on their own productions.

There are in this collection several letters from Lord
Byron to his mother, in which he usually addresses her as the
“Honourable Mrs. Byron,” a title
to which he well knew she had no manner of right. He sometimes begins, “Dear
Mother,” but more generally “Dear Madam,” and the tone of his
correspondence with her is correctly described as that “of a son, performing, strictly
and conscientiously, what he deems to be his duty, without the intermixture of any
sentiment of cordiality to sweeten the task.” By way of contrast to this picture,
Mr. Moore observes in a note, that “in many
instances the mothers of illustrious poets have had reason to be proud, no less of the
affection, than of the glory of their sons; and Tasso, Pope, Gray, and Cowper,
are among these memorable examples of filial tenderness. In the lesser poems of
Tasso, there are few things so beautiful as his description, in
the Canzone to the Metauro, of his first parting with his mother.” To these
ex-

Lord Byron.

231

amples of filial piety, the future biographer of Mr.
Moore will have to add another. It happens to us to know, that the intercourse
between the distinguished author of Lalla
Rookh, and his mother, has been uniformly marked by the most endearing mutual
kindness and attention.

Mr. Moore gives an interesting account of the
commencement of his own acquaintance with Lord Byron, which,
as is well known, grew out of a passage in the “English bards and Scotch reviewers,” giving, as Mr.
Moore conceived, the “lie” to a public statement of his respecting
the affair with Mr. Jeffrey. The explanations offered by
Lord Byron, were so satisfactory, that an intercourse, begun in
hostility, ended in a friendship which lasted without the slightest interruption, until the
death of the noble poet. Their first meeting, which took place at the table of Mr. Rogers, is thus described.

‘It was, at first, intended by Mr. Rogers that his company at dinner should not extend beyond Lord Byron and myself; but Mr.
Thomas Campbell, having called upon our host that morning, was invited to
join the party, and consented. Such a meeting could not be otherwise than interesting to us
all. It was the first time that Lord Byron was ever seen by any of his
three companions; while he, on his side, for the first time, found himself in the society
of persons, whose names had been associated with his first literary dreams, and to two* of whom he looked up with that tributary admiration, which
youthful genius is ever ready to pay to its precursors.

‘Among the impressions which this meeting left upon me,
what I chiefly remember to have remarked was the nobleness of his air, his beauty, the
gentleness of his voice and manners, and—what was, naturally, not the least attraction—his
marked kindness to myself. Being in mourning for his mother, the colour, as well of his
dress, as of his glossy, curling, and picturesque hair, gave more effect to the pure,
spiritual paleness of his features, in the expression of which, when he spoke, there was a
perpetual play of lively thought, though melancholy was their habitual character, when in
repose.

‘As we had none of us been apprized of his peculiarities
with respect to food, the embarrassment of our host was not a little, on discovering that
there was nothing upon the table which his noble guest could eat or drink. Neither meat,
fish, or wine, would Lord Byron touch; and of biscuits
and soda-water, which he asked for, there had been, unluckily, no provision. He professed,
however, to be equally well pleased with potatoes and vinegar; and of these meagre
materials contrived to make rather a hearty dinner.’—pp. 314, 315.

* ‘In speaking thus, I beg to disclaim all affected modesty. Lord Byron had already made the same distinction himself
in the opinions which he expressed of the living poets; and I cannot but be aware that,
for the praises which he afterwards bestowed on my writings, I was, in a great degree,
indebted to his partiality to myself.’

232

Lord Byron.

‘We frequently, during; the first months of our
acquaintance, dined together alone; and as we had no club in common, to resort to, the
Alfred being the only one to which he, at that period, belonged, and I being then a member
of none but Watier’s,—our dinners used to be either at the St. Alban’s, or at
his old haunt, Stevens’s. Though at times he would drink freely enough of claret, he
still adhered to his system of abstinence in food. He appeared, indeed, to have conceived a
notion that animal food had some peculiar influence on the character; and I remember one
day, as I sat opposite to him, employed, I suppose, rather earnestly over a beef-steak,
after watching me for a few seconds, he said, in a grave tone of
inquiry—“Moore, don’t you
find eating beef-steak makes you ferocious?”’—p. 324.

“Childe Harold”
appeared in March 1812, and at once established the fame of the author. There is, we believe,
no example upon record, of such a rapid advance to permanent glory as that which was made by
Lord Byron. Before the publication of that poem he was
known only as the writer of some dull verses, which were praised because they were written by a
nobleman, and of a satire which though clever and pungent, was not capable of conferring upon
him an enviable reputation. But when “Childe Harold” came
forth, the effect was magical. He became, of course, for the season, the “lion” of
all fashionable parties, and was looked up to as the first poet of the age. His fame was
confirmed, and indeed increased by the “Giaour,” the “Bride of
Abydos,” and the other beautiful poems which poured from his fancy,
successively, in such rich profusion. It is a remarkable trait in his character, and strongly
indicative of his ancestorial pride, that, although his circumstances were very far from being
in a flourishing condition, he refused to accept, for himself, any thing in the way of
pecuniary reward for his earlier writings.

We have been much amused with several of the extracts, which Mr. Moore has given from Lord
Byron’s journals. The following may serve as a specimen of the most
innocent, as well as the most lively portions of those incoherent memoranda:—

‘“I am ennuyé beyond my usual
tense of that yawning verb, which I am always conjugating; and I don’t find that
society much mends the matter. I am too lazy to shoot myself—and it would annoy Augusta, and perhaps * *; but it
would be a good thing for George, on the other side,
and no bad one for me; but I wont be tempted.

‘“I have had the kindest letter from M * *e. I do think that man is the best-hearted, the only
hearted being I ever encountered; and then, his talents are equal to his feelings.

‘“The Staël wwas at the other end of the table, and
less loquacious than heretofore. We are now very good friends; though she asked Lady Melbourne whether I had really any bonhommie. She might as well have asked that question
before she told C. L. ‘c’est un
démon.’ True enough, but rather premature, for she could not have found it out, and so—she wants me to dine there next
Sunday.

‘“Murray
prospers, as far as circulation. For my part, I adhere (in liking) to my Fragment. It is no
wonder that I wrote one—my mind is a fragment.

‘“Saw Lord
Gower, Tierney, &c. in the square.
Took leave of Lord Gr. who is going to Holland and Germany. He tells me, that he carries
with him a parcel of ‘Harolds’
and ‘Giaours,’ &c. for the
readers of Berlin, who, it seems, read English, and have taken a caprice for mine. Um!—have
I been German all this time, when I thought myself oriental? * *
*

‘“Lent Tierney my box for to-morrow; and received a new Comedy sent by
Lady C. A.—but not hers. I must read it,
and endeavour not to displease the author. I hate annoying them with cavil; but a comedy I
take to be the most difficult of compositions, more so than tragedy.

‘“G—t says
there is a coincidence between the first part of ‘the Bride’ and some story of his—whether published or
not, I know not, never having seen it. He is almost the last person on whom any one would
commit literary larceny, and I am not conscious of any witting
thefts on any of the genus. As to originality, all pretensions are
ludicrous,—‘there is nothing new under the sun.’

‘“Went last night to the play. * * * *
Invited out to a party, but did not go;—right. Refused to go to Lady * *’s on Monday;—right again. If I must fritter away my
life, I would rather do it alone. I was much tempted;—C * * looked so Turkish with her red turban, and her regular dark
and clear features. Not that she and I ever
were, or could be, any thing; but I love any aspect that reminds me of the ‘children
of the sun.’

‘“To dine to-day with Rogers and Sharpe, for which I have
some appetite, not having tasted food for the preceding forty-eight hours. I wish I could
leave off eating altogether.’—pp. 466—468.

Lord Byron’s marriage with Miss Milbanke took place in the early part of 1815, and as the separation which
took place in about a year after, was then, and still is, in many respects, a mystery, we must
dedicate our remaining space to Mr. Moore’s
account of that unhappy event.

‘I have already, in some observations on the general
character of men of genius, endeavoured to point out those peculiarities, both in
disposition and habitudes, by which, in the far greater number of instances, they have been
found unfitted for domestic happiness. Of these defects (which are, as it were, the shadow
that genius casts, and too generally, it is to be feared, in proportion to its stature,)
Lord Byron could not, of course, fail to have
inherited his share, in common with all the painfully-gifted class to which he belonged.
How thoroughly, with respect to one attribute of this temperament which he possessed,—one
that “sicklies o’er” the face of happiness itself,—he was
understood by the person most interested in observing him, will appear from the following
anecdote, as related by himself.

234

Lord Byron.

‘“People have wondered at the melancholy which runs
through my writings. Others have wondered at my personal gaiety. But I recollect once,
after an hour in which I had been sincerely and particularly gay and rather brilliant, in
company, my wife replying to me when I said (upon her remarking my high spirits),
‘And yet, Bell, I have been called and
mis-called melancholy—you must have seen how falsely,
frequently?’—‘No, Byron,’ she answered, ‘it is not so: at heart you are the
most melancholy of mankind; and often when apparently gayest.’”

‘To these faults and sources of faults, inherent in his
own sensitive nature, he added also many of those which a long indulgence of self-will
generates,—the least compatible, of all others (if not softened down, as they were in him,
by good-nature), with that system of mutual concession and sacrifice by which the balance
of domestic peace is maintained. When we look back, indeed, to the unbridled career, of
which this marriage was meant to be the goal,—to the rapid and restless course in which his
life had run along, like a burning train, through a series of wanderings, adventures,
successes, and passions, the fever of all which was still upon him, when, with the same
headlong recklessness, he rushed into this marriage,—it can but little surprise us that, in
the space of one short year, he should not have been able to recover all at once from his
bewilderment, or to settle down into that tame level of conduct which the officious spies
of his privacy required. As well might it be expected that a steed like his own Mazeppa’s,

‘“Wild as the wild deer and untaught,

With spur and bridle undefiled—

’Twas but a day he had been caught,”

should stand still, when reined, without chafing or champing the bit.

‘Even had the new condition of life into which he passed
been one of prosperity and smoothness, some time, as well as tolerance, must still have
been allowed for the subsiding of so excited a spirit into rest. But, on the contrary, his
marriage (from the reputation, no doubt, of the lady, as an heiress) was, at once, a signal
for all the arrears and claims of a long-accumulating state of embarrassment to explode
upon him;—his door was almost daily beset by duns, and his house nine times during that
year in possession of bailiffs;* while, in addition to these anxieties and—what he felt
still more

* ‘An anecdote connected with one of these occasions is
thus related in the Journal just referred to.

‘“When the bailiff (for I have seen most kinds of
life) came upon me in 1815 to seize my chattels, (being a peer of parliament,
my person was beyond him,) being curious (as is my habit), I first asked him
‘what extents elsewhere he had for government?’ upon which he
showed me one upon one house only for seventy thousand pounds! Next I asked him if he had nothing for
Sheridan?
‘Oh—Sheridan!’ said he;
‘ay, I have this’ (pulling out a pocket book, &c.);
‘but, my lord, I have been in
Sheridan’s house a twelvemonth at a time—a
civil gentleman—knows how to deal with us,’ &c. &c. &c. Our own business was then
discussed, which was none of the easiest for me at that time. But the man was
civil, and (what I valued more) communicative. I had met many of his brethren,
years before, in affairs of my friends (commoners, that is), but this was the
first (or second) on my own account. A civil man; fee’d accordingly:
probably he anticipated as much.”’

Lord Byron.

235

—indignities of poverty, he had also the pain of fancying, whether
lightly or wrongly, that the eyes of enemies and spies were upon him, even under his own
roof, and that his every hasty word and look were interpreted in the most perverting
light.

‘As, from the state of their means, his lady and he saw
but little society, his only relief from the thoughts which a life of such embarrassment
brought with it was in those avocations which his duty, as a member of the Drury-lane
Committee, imposed upon him. And here,—in this most unlucky connection with the
theatre,—one of the fatalities of his short year of trial, as husband, lay. From the
reputation which he had previously acquired for gallantries, and the sort of reckless and
boyish levity to which—often in very “bitterness of soul”—he gave way, it was
not difficult to bring suspicion upon some of those acquaintances which his frequent
intercourse with the green-room induced him to form, or even (as, in one instance, was the
case), to connect with his name injuriously that of a person to whom he had scarcely ever
addressed a single word.

‘Notwithstanding, however, this ill-starred concurrence of
circumstances, which might have palliated any excesses either of temper or conduct into
which they drove him, it was, after all, I am persuaded, to no such serious causes that the
unfortunate alienation, which so soon ended in disunion, is to be traced.
“In all the marriages I have ever seen,” says
Steele, “most of which have been
unhappy ones, the great cause of evil has proceeded from slight occasions;”
and to this remark the marriage at present under our consideration would not be found, I
think, on inquiry, to furnish much exception. Lord Byron
himself, indeed, when at Cephalonia, a short time before his death, seems to have
expressed, in a few words, the whole pith of the mystery. An English gentleman with whom he
was conversing on the subject of Lady Byron, having
ventured to enumerate to him the various causes he had heard alleged for the separation,
the noble poet, who had seemed much amused with their absurdity and falsehood, said, after
listening to them all,—“the causes, my dear sir, were too simple to be easily
found out.”

‘In truth, the circumstances, so unexampled, that attended
their separation,—the last words of the parting wife to the husband being those of the most
playful affection, while the language of the deserted husband towards the wife was in a
strain, as the world knows, of tenderest eulogy,—are in themselves a sufficient proof that,
at the time of their parting, there could have been no very deep sense of injury on either
side. It was not till afterwards that, in both bosoms, the repulsive force came into
operation,—when, to the party which had taken the first decisive step in the strife, it
became naturally a point of pride to persevere in it with dignity, and this unbendingness
provoked, as naturally, in the haughty spirit of the other, a strong feeling of resentment
which overflowed, at last, in acrimony and scorn. If there be any truth, however, in the
principle that they “never pardon, who have done the wrong,” Lord Byron, who was, to the last, disposed to reconciliation,
proved so far, at least, his conscience to have been unhaunted by any very disturbing
consciousness of aggression.

‘But though it would have been difficult, perhaps, for the
victims of this strife, themselves, to have pointed out any single, or definite, cause for
their disunion,—beyond that general incompatibility which is the canker of all such
marriages,—the public, which seldom allows itself to be at a fault on these occasions, was,
as usual, ready with an ample supply of reasons

236

Lord Byron.

for the breach,—all
tending to blacken the already darkly painted character of the poet, and representing him,
in short, as a finished monster of cruelty and depravity. The reputation of the object of
his choice for every possible virtue (a reputation which had been, I doubt not, one of his
own chief incentives to the marriage, from the vanity, reprobate as he knew he was deemed,
of being able to win such a paragon), was now turned against him by his assailants, not
only in the way of contrast with his own character, but as if the excellences of the wife
were proof positive of every enormity they chose to charge upon the husband.

‘Meanwhile, the unmoved silence of the lady herself (from
motives, it is but fair to suppose, of generosity and delicacy), under the repeated demands
made for a specification of her charges against him, left to malice and imagination the
fullest range for their combined industry. It was accordingly stated, and almost
universally believed, that the noble lord’s second proposal to Miss Milbanke had been but with a view to revenge himself for
the slight inflicted by her refusal of the first, and that he himself had confessed so much
to her, on their way from church. At the time when, as the reader has seen from his own
honey-moon letters, he was with all the good-will in the world, imagining himself into
happiness, and even boasting, in the pride of his fancy, that if marriage were to be upon
lease, he would gladly renew his own for a term of ninety-nine years,—at this very time,
according to these veracious chroniclers, he was employed in darkly following up the
aforesaid scheme of revenge, and tormenting his lady by all sorts of unmanly
cruelties,—such as firing off pistols, to frighten her as she lay in bed,* and other such
freaks.

‘To the falsehoods concerning his green-room intimacies,
and particularly with respect to one beautiful actress, with whom, in reality, he had
hardly ever exchanged a single word, I have already adverted; and the extreme confidence
with which this tale was circulated and believed affords no unfair specimen of the sort of
evidence with which the public, in all such fits of moral wrath, is satisfied. It is, at
the same time, very far from my intention to allege that, in the course of the noble
poet’s intercourse with the theatre, he was not sometimes led into a line of
acquaintance and converse, unbefitting, if not dangerous to, the steadiness of married
life. But the imputations against him on this head were (as far as affected his conjugal
character) not the less unfounded,—as the sole case, in which he afforded any thing like
real grounds for such an accusation, did not take place till after the period of the separation.’—pp. 649—653.

* ‘For this story, however, there was so far a foundation that
the practice to which he had accustomed himself from boyhood, of having loaded pistols
always near him at night, was considered so strange a propensity as to be included in
that list of symptoms (sixteen, I believe, in number) which were submitted to medical
opinion, in proof of his insanity. Another symptom was the emotion, almost to
hysterics, which he had exhibited on seeing Kean
act Sir Giles Overreach. But the most plausible of
all the grounds, as he himself used to allow, on which these articles of impeachment
against his sanity were drawn up, was an act of violence committed by him on a
favourite old watch that had been his companion from boyhood, and had gone with him to
Greece. In a fit of vexation and rage, brought on by some of those humiliating
embarrassments to which he was now almost daily a prey, he furiously dashed this watch
upon the hearth, and ground it to pieces among the ashes with the poker.’

Lord Byron.

237

To this account, which, after all, still leaves something to be explained, it is
but an act of justice towards Lady Byron, to add a note which her husband addressed to Mr.
Rogers on this melancholy subject.

March 25th, 1816.

‘“You are one of the few persons with whom I have lived in what
is called intimacy, and have heard me at times conversing on the untoward topic of my
recent family disquietudes. Will you have the goodness to say to me at once, whether you
ever heard me speak of her with disrespect, with unkindness, or defending myself at her
expence by any serious imputation of any description against her?
Did you never hear me say ‘that when there was a right or a wrong, she had the right?’—The reason I put these questions to you or others of
my friends is, because I am said, by her and hers, to have resorted to such means of
exculpation. Ever very truly yours,
‘“B.’”—p. 655.

Shortly after this event Lord Byron once more
took his departure from England—never to see its shores again. The history of the remainder of
his career, will be told in the second volume. It will, we fear, be in too many respects like
that which we have just closed, the picture of a wayward, and yet powerful mind,—knowing what
is right, but unhappily too often adopting what is wrong. We follow his story with much of that
sort of interest which attaches to the memoirs of Napoleon, and shall look forward to its continuation with impatience.

Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Scottish poet and song collector; author of Poems, chiefly in the
Scottish Dialect (1786).

Amelia Byron, baroness Darcy (de Knayth) [née Darcy] (1754-1784)
Daughter and heir of Robert D'Arcy, fourth earl of Holdernesse; in 1773 she married
Francis Osborne, marquess of Carmarthen, who divorced her following her affair with Captain
John Byron whom she married in 1779. She was the mother of Augusta Byron, the poet's
half-sister.

George Anson Byron, seventh Baron Byron (1789-1868)
Naval officer and Byron's heir; the son of Captain John Byron (1758-93), he was lord of
the bedchamber (1830-1837) and lord-in-waiting (1837-1860) to Queen Victoria.

John Byron [Mad Jack] (1756-1791)
The son of Admiral John Byron; he was the father of Lord Byron, and of Augusta Byron by a
prior marriage with Amelia Darcy, Baroness Darcy (1754-84).

William Cowper (1731-1800)
English poet, author of Olney Hymns (1779), John
Gilpin (1782), and The Task (1785); Cowper's delicate
mental health attracted as much sympathy from romantic readers as his letters, edited by
William Hayley, did admiration.

George Crabbe (1754-1832)
English poet renowned for his couplet verse and gloomy depictions of country persons and
places; author of the The Village (1783), The
Parish Register (1807), The Borough (1810), and Tales of the Hall (1819).

George Croly (1780-1860)
Anglo-Irish poet, novelist, and essayist for Blackwood's; his gothic novel Salathiel (1828) was often reprinted.

George Augustus W. Curzon (1788-1805)
Byron's schoolmate at Harrow; the eldest son of Sophia-Charlotte, Baroness Howe and the
Hon. Penn Assheton Curzon.

James Harvey D'Egville (1770 c.-1836 c.)
British actor and dancer (born Harvey); he was choreographer at the King's Theatre
(1807-08).

Robert Charles Dallas (1754-1824)
English poet, novelist, and translator who corresponded with Byron. His sister Charlotte
Henrietta Dallas (d. 1793) married Captain George Anson Byron (1758-1793); their son George
Anson Byron (1789-1868) inherited Byron's title in 1824.

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Florentine poet, the author of the Divine Comedy and other
works.

Sir Francis Blake Delaval (1727-1771)
Educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, he was a military officer, patron of
the arts, and MP for Hindon (1751-54) and Andover (1754-68).

Joseph Drury (1751-1834)
Byron's instructor at Harrow School, where he was headmaster from 1784 to 1805.

John Duncombe (1854 fl.)
London printer and bookseller, active 1817-54.

Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817)
Irish magnate and writer on education; he published Practical
Education, 2 vols (1788), and other works in collaboration with his daughter the
novelist.

John Fitzgibbon, second earl of Clare (1792-1851)
A Harrow friend of Byron's, son of the Lord Chamberlain of Ireland; he once fought a duel
with Henry Grattan's son in response to an aspersion on his father. Lord Clare was Governor
of Bombay between 1830 and 1834.

William Fletcher (1831 fl.)
Byron's valet, the son of a Newstead tenant; he continued in service to the end of the
poet's life, after which he was pensioned by the family. He married Anne Rood, formerly
maid to Augusta Leigh, and was living in London in 1831.

Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827)
Italian poet and critic who settled in London in 1816 where he contributed essays on
Italian literature to the Edinburgh and Quarterly
Reviews.

Henry Richard Fox, third baron Holland (1773-1840)
Whig politician and literary patron; Holland House was for many years the meeting place
for reform-minded politicians and writers. He also published translations from the Spanish
and Italian; Memoirs of the Whig Party was published in 1852.

John Hookham Frere (1769-1846)
English diplomat and poet; educated at Eton and Cambridge, he was envoy to Lisbon
(1800-02) and Madrid (1802-04, 1808-09); with Canning conducted the The
Anti-Jacobin (1797-98); author of Prospectus and Specimen of an
intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft (1817, 1818).

John Galt (1779-1839)
Scottish novelist who met Byron during the first journey to Greece and was afterwards his
biographer; author of Annals of the Parish (1821).

Pietro Gamba (1801-1827)
The brother of Teresa Guiccioli and member of Carbonieri. He followed Byron to Greece and
left a memoir of his experiences.

Charles John Gardiner, first earl of Blessington (1782-1829)
The son of Luke Gardiner, first Viscount Mountjoy, educated at Eton. After a second
marriage to Lady Blessington in 1818 he traveled on the Continent with his wife and Count
D'Orsay, residing in Naples and Paris.

Marguerite Gardiner, countess of Blessington [née Power] (1789-1849)
After a separation from a first husband in 1818 she married the Earl of Blessington; they
traveled on the Continent, meeting Byron in 1822; her best-known work, Journal of Conversations with Lord Byron, originally appeared in the New Monthly Magazine (1832-33).

William Gifford (1756-1826)
Poet, scholar, and editor who began as a shoemaker's apprentice; after Oxford he
published The Baviad (1794), The Maeviad
(1795), and The Satires of Juvenal translated (1802) before becoming
the founding editor of the Quarterly Review (1809-24).

William Glennie (1761-1828)
Originally of Aberdeen; Byron studied at Dr. Glennie's Academy at Dulwich in 1799.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832)
German poet, playwright, and novelist; author of The Sorrows of Young
Werther (1774) and Faust (1808, 1832).

George Granville Leveson- Gower, first duke of Sutherland (1758-1833)
The son of the first marquess of Stafford (d. 1803); he was one of the wealthiest men in
Britain with an annual income of £200,000; his program for Scottish clearances and
resettlement was widely unpopular. He was created duke in 1833.

Granville Leveson- Gower, first earl Granville (1773-1846)
English diplomat and ally of George Canning; he was ambassador to St Petersburg (1804-06,
1807) and ambassador to Paris (1824-1828). The Duchess of Devonshire described him as “the
Adonis of his day.”

John Cam Hobhouse, baron Broughton (1786-1869)
Founder of the Cambridge Whig Club; traveled with Byron in the orient, radical MP for
Westminster (1820); Byron's executor; after a long career in politics published Some Account of a Long Life (1865) later augmented as Recollections of a Long Life, 6 vols (1909-1911).

Francis Hodgson (1781-1852)
Provost of Eton College, translator of Juvenal (1807) and close friend of Byron. He wrote
for the Monthly and Critical Reviews, and was
author of (among other volumes of poetry) Childe Harold's Monitor; or
Lines occasioned by the last Canto of Childe Harold (1818).

Frederick Howard, fifth earl of Carlisle (1748-1825)
The Earl of Carlisle was appointed Lord Byron's guardian in 1799; they did not get along.
He published a volume of Poems (1773) that included a translation
from Dante.

Peter Hunter (1804 fl.)
Byron's schoolmate at Harrow; the Harrow School Register records that a Peter Hunter
entered in September 1802, and was afterward “Colonel in the Army.”

John Jackson [Gentleman Jackson] (1769-1845)
Pugilist; champion of England from 1795 to 1804, when he was defeated by Jem Belcher.
After retirement he established a school that became headquarters of the Pugilistic
Club.

Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850)
Scottish barrister, Whig MP, and co-founder and editor of the Edinburgh
Review (1802-29). As a reviewer he was the implacable foe of the Lake School of
poetry.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
English man of letters, among many other works he edited A Dictionary
of the English Language (1755) and Shakespeare (1765), and wrote Lives of the Poets (1779-81).

Edmund Kean (1787-1833)
English tragic actor famous for his Shakespearean roles.

John Keats (1795-1821)
English poet, author of Endymion, "The Eve of St. Agnes," and
other poems, who died of tuberculosis in Rome.

Captain Kidd (1809 fl.)
The Captain of the Lisbon packet, Princess Elizabeth, which Byron
took to Portugal.

Lady Caroline Lamb [née Ponsonby] (1785-1828)
Daughter of the third earl of Bessborough; she married the Hon. William Lamb (1779-1848)
and fictionalized her infatuation with Lord Byron in her first novel, Glenarvon (1816).

Elizabeth Lamb, viscountess Melbourne [née Milbanke] (1751-1818)
Whig hostess married to Peniston Lamb, first Viscount Melbourne (1744-1828); she was the
confidant of Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, the mother of William Lamb (1779-1848), and
mother-in-law of Lady Caroline Lamb.

Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830)
English portrait painter who succeeded Joshua Reynolds as painter in ordinary to the king
(1792); he was president of the Royal Academy (1820).

George Leigh (1771-1850)
Officer in the 10th Light Dragoons, gambler, and boon companion of the Prince of Wales;
he married Augusta Byron in 1807.

Francis Le Mann (d. 1851)
Lady Byron's physician, who was called in to testify on Byron's sanity. He is possibly
the Francis Lemann of Portman Sq., member of the College of Physicians (1827), who died 9
April 1851.

Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832)
Scottish philosopher and man of letters who defended the French Revolution in Vindiciae Gallicae (1791); he was Recorder of Bombay (1803-1812) and
MP for Knaresborough (1819-32).

Jean-François Marmontel (1723-1799)
French dramatist, historian, and encyclopedist, elected to the Académie française in
1763.

Charles Skinner Matthews (1785-1811)
The libertine friend of Byron and Hobhouse at Trinity College, Cambridge; he was drowned
in the Cam.

Julius Michael Millingen (1800-1878)
Physician at Missolonghi and author of Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece
with Anecdotes relating to Lord Byron (1831). In 1825 he joined the Turks and
spent the remainder of his days living in Constantinople.

William Mitford (1744-1827)
English historian, author of The History of Greece, 5 vols
(1784-1818) and other works.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Irish poet and biographer, author of the Irish Melodies (1807-34),
The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and Lalla
Rookh (1817); he was Byron's close friend and designated biographer.

Joe Murray (d. 1820)
Byron's elderly steward at Newstead Abbey who had served under the previous lord
Byron.

John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.

John Musters (1777-1849)
Of Colwick; he married Mary Chaworth, the then object of Byron's affections, in
1805.

Mary Ann Musters [née Chaworth] (1785-1832)
The grand-niece of the Chaworth who was killed by “Wicked Jack” Byron; she was the object
of Byron's affections before and after she married John Musters in 1805.

Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).

Margaret Parker (d. 1802)
Byron's early love, the sister of Sir Peter Parker whose death he commemorated in an
elegy. Her mother, Augusta Barbara Charlotte Byron Parker, was the daughter of Admiral
Byron.

Bridget Elizabeth Pigot (1783-1866)
Byron's early friend who lived with her mother and brothers at Southwell Green where
Byron visited his mother at Burgage Manor.

Gaetano Polidori (1764-1853)
The father of Byron's acquaintance; after serving as secretary to the Italian poet
Alfieri he emigrated to England where he worked as a miscellaneous writer and established a
press where he published works by his grandchildren Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina
Rossetti.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
English poet and satirist; author of The Rape of the Lock (1714)
and The Dunciad (1728).

John Ridge (1828 fl.)
Byron's original printer, at Newark near Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire; trade records
indicate that he worked as a bookseller, stationer, and printer from 1788 to 1828. He
married a Miss Hilton, 18 July 1805.

John Russell, first earl Russell (1792-1878)
English statesman, son of John Russell sixth duke of Bedford (1766-1839); he was author
of Essay on the English Constitution (1821) and Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe (1824) and was Prime Minister (1865-66).

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley [née Godwin] (1797-1851)
English novelist, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecaft, and the second wife
of Percy Bysshe Shelley. She is the author of Frankenstein (1818)
and The Last Man (1835) and the editor of Shelley's works
(1839-40).

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
English poet, with Byron in Switzerland in 1816; author of Queen
Mab (1813), The Revolt of Islam (1817), The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound (1820), and Adonais (1821).

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)
Anglo-Irish playwright, author of The School for Scandal (1777),
Whig MP and ally of Charles James Fox (1780-1812).

Edward Smedley the younger (1788-1836)
English poet who wrote for the British Critic and Quarterly Review; he proposed publishing a Bowdlerized edition of
the Faerie Queene.

Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813), History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).

Germaine de Staël (1766-1817)
French woman of letters; author of the novel Corinne, ou L'Italie
(1807) and De l'Allemagne (1811); banned from Paris by Napoleon, she
spent her later years living in Germany, Britain, and Switzerland.

Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729)
English playwright and essayist, who conducted The Tatler, and
(with Joseph Addison) The Spectator and The
Guardian.

George Tierney (1761-1830)
Whig MP and opposition leader whose political pragmatism made him suspect in the eyes of
his party; he fought a bloodless duel with Pitt in 1798. He is the “Friend of Humanity” in
Canning and Frere's “The Needy Knife-Grinder.”

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.